Let’s play anomaly!
Most of this week, I’ve written about the fun time I had playing around with NCBI’s Blink database and finding evidence that at least one mosquito, Aedes aegypti, seems to have been infected at some point with a plant paramyxovirus and that the paramyxovirus left one of its genes behind, stuck in the mosquito genome.

During this process, I realized that the method I used works with other viruses, too. I tried it with a few random viruses and sure enough, I found some interesting things.

You’ve got a week to give it a try. Let’s see what you find! The method is described here and you can look at my work with the mumps virus to see an example.

Give it a try and post your results, if you like, – the virus, the gene, and the weird thing you found, in the comments. I’ll take a look – in a week or so and see if there’s anything more you can do to add to what you’ve found.